Stuck in a reboot loop, verbose attached. Any thoughts?

[TheITBaron]

Hi,

I tried to upgrade from el capitan to high sierra a few months ago, but got stuck and never had time to finish the upgrade. Luckily I had a backup drive, I could boot up and continue working from.
(I posted a guide on here to my backup process if anyone is interested:

Backup hackintosh + bootloader with dd (terminal)

Hi, I have been looking for methods to FULLY backup my primary hackintosh drive (running 10.11), including the clover EFI partition. I have combed through the tonymac site, and have seen you can use timemachine, CCC, or super duper, to backup the system disk, but not the EFI partition? If...

www.tonymacx86.com

)


To begin my update:
I updated my clover to version 5018, then I proceeded to update from el capitan to high sierra, excluding the AFPS conversion using this guide here:

Update Directly to macOS High Sierra

Established users of macOS Sierra who wish to update directly to macOS High Sierra can do so just like a regular Mac would. These fully native methods require no USB creation or preparation and allow you to keep all of your files and settings. Before you begin, we strongly recommend performing...

www.tonymacx86.com

After I could tell the update was finished:
I was able to "finish" the update process, because the progress meter was finished and the install disk was gone, but the system refuses to boot now. I can boot into safe mode with clover and see that the system is running High Sierra, in the about menu.
But if I try to start the system normally (my normal startup volume), it gets stuck in a boot loop. Attached are the clover verbose logs, I also have a video because the pictures were tough to capture.

[Boot options] I have a 980 ti, so I needed to add extra boot args



My video screenshots, full video below if more detail is needed







[Note: I originally had a problem at this stage ^, where I would see "Start random seed" "End random seed", then endless '++++++' signs. Finally I would get a reboot after the + signs.
I got passed this somehow by Fixing the clover headers or dropping the MATS table (I read about this on the forums somewhere), as it was necessary for my family of motherboard. My boot args also might have helped me progress. However I still can't complete the boot.]
[Continue Progress...]










[Reboot]


Here is a 30s video of the boot loop process
[https://streamable.com/ppxdk]




EXTRA INFO
These are the kexts I remember downloading, would any of these cause an issue like this?
WhateverGreen.kext
Lilu.kext
FakeSMC.kext
AtherosE2200Ethernet-v2.2.0
AppleIntelE1000e.kext
AppleALC.kext



I originally let this boot loop continue for a few minutes, hoping something would change, but there was no change in the boot loop, and it continued to fail to boot the system. I managed to record this process but then after X amount of tries, my BIOS refused to boot, and I was stuck with a blinking cursor on a black screen. Now the motherboard refused to boot and flashed a LED error on the PCB. Once this happened, I was forced to call the update off because now I was concerned the system is broken. I ended up taking out the BIOS battery cell, reset the bios, and hooked up my backup drive .

Luckily I was able to boot into my old system again after adjusting the BIOS settings for clover.

Super frustrating to be so close to tasting my new high sierra update but instead went 2 steps back, and had to frantically get an operational system again.

I am not sure if this is a clover issue, or a kext issue, or a GPU issue, but I was so close and would love to be able to salvage this install!
Any thoughts would be highly appreciated!

Thank you!

 

[TheITBaron]

*bump

 

[TheITBaron]

*Bump

 

[P1LGRIM]

Serial ports should be disabled in the BIOS settings :

 

[TheITBaron]

Thank you so much for your reply! I am just curious, this seems to happen earlier on in the log, are there no errors in the log itself? According to the log, does the computer try to successfully reboot and the serial ports are causing a loop error?

I am using my el capitan backup, and am able to successfully boot into the system without issues.

 

[TheITBaron]

Also is there anyway you can confirm if my boot args look in order? Theres no reason my external GPU is causing some sort of error?

 

[P1LGRIM]

does the computer try to successfully reboot and the serial ports are causing a loop error?

Enabled serial ports have been seen to conflict with Nvidia drivers from Sierra onwards.

 

[TheITBaron]

Thank you so much I really appreciate it! Is that the only issue you see with the set up? Is there anyway you can confirm if my boot args look correct? I will try to boot up with the same args and just want to be sure before I do.

Also, does the fact that I can boot into High Sierra safe mode mean I have upgraded that system successfully?